Annually, millions of dollars worth of coupons are distributed by retail businesses to attract new customers and encourage more purchases from existing customers. Although coupons are a successful way to promote, they are fraught with serious problems which negate the total effectiveness of the coupon program. For example, coupons may be redeemed by customers well before or after their valid dates, and in many cases whole books cf coupons may be redeemed at one time regardless of the valid date on the coupon. Mystery prizes or discounts (often concealed by a concealment device which is scratched off to reveal the prize won or discount to be received) are often illegally and fraudulently misused in order to reveal the prize to the retailer before the customer is given the coupon. Coupons which have a concealment device to conceal a winning prize are also often fraudulently redeemed by dealers/franchisers. Coupons distributed by one retailer are often redeemed by his or her competitors. Millions of potential promotional dollars have been lost by the promoting companies because of these fraudulent practices.
The need exists for ensuring that coupons will be redeemed as intended so that the company issuing the coupons fully obtains the benefits of their couponing programs.
Recently, systems have been developed for reading bar codes applied to coupons or tickets for the purpose of validating same.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,926 (Jones et al) discloses a bar code reader for sensing a plurality of patterns on a document in a predetermined sequence. The Jones et al Patent provides a general overview of well known prior art bar code readers.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,553 (Roberts et al) discloses a lottery ticket device which incorporates sensors for reading a bar code, a printer for indicating a win to the purchaser as well as printing on the bar code a validation mark, and a sensor for determining the presence of the validation mark. The validation information is embedded within a "V" sector of the bar code.
The invention of Roberts et al suffers from the disadvantage that there is no mechanism by which the system is capable of determining whether a coupon has been presented within a valid time frame, with the result that coupons may be redeemed fraudulently by customers well before or after the valid dates, as discussed above.